Abstract
The improvement of the thermal conductivity of the nanoliquid due to the inclusion of a certain amount of nanoparticles is well known. However, the cause of the observed abnormal improvement remains unclear. For this reason, the aggregation kinematics of nanoparticles is significant for evaluating the appropriate thermal effect of particles at the nanoscale. The scope of nanomaterials can be seen in various engineering and industrial fields such as nuclear reactor coolants, heat exchangers, aircraft coolants, microreactor coolants, automobile radiators, solar collectors, etc. Therefore, this study investigates the effects of the aggregation of nanoparticles on radiative nanoliquid flow with activation energy over a horizontal tube subjected to the convective thermal boundary conditions. Experimentally verified correlations of multiwall carbon nanotube aggregation are utilized. The response surface methodology (RSM) is used to determine the optimum levels of the physical parameters to maximize the mass transfer rate of the nanoliquid. The magnitude of the volume fraction and velocity are superior in the absence of aggregation kinematics than in the presence of nanoparticles aggregation mechanism. From the RSM analysis, the maximum Sherwood number obtained is 1.1384 with desirability d = 0.9993. The present results may have applications in nanoliquid-dependent structures, heating/cooling processes, and thermal systems.